


missing-him-thing

by Thealmostrhetoricalquestion



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Consent, Developing Relationship, Family Feels, First Kiss, Fluff and Humor, Getting Together, Getting to Know Each Other, M/M, Mild Language, Parenthood, Post-Hogwarts, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-03-25 06:55:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13828875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thealmostrhetoricalquestion/pseuds/Thealmostrhetoricalquestion
Summary: "Did you miss me?" Draco asks.He’s teasing. Teasing and amused, and he doesn’t mean it, doesn’t expect a serious answer, or an answer at all, so Harry feels quite within his rights to shove Draco away, scoffing. Draco laughs, and it’s not the snide, mocking sound from their childhood, the laugh that used to make rage bubble in every delicate vein, as fierce and forceful as dragon-fire.Did you miss me?Every damn day,Harry doesn’t say.-In which Harry and Draco teach their kids about consent, and fall in love along the way.





	missing-him-thing

**Author's Note:**

> No warnings, apart from some mild language.
> 
> Fairy Poem is from a book by Carol Tibbs, and I think it’s called Fairy Rhymes. 
> 
> Thank you to be lovely Beta, L, for ironing out this story.

Ears of corn grow fat and gold in their fields. Spring is beginning to die, bringing with it the birth of a scorching summer heat and weeks of warm rain. Harry traces a line down the dust-slick window and observes as his damp breath mists over the stripe left behind, before staring out at the fields in the distance.

It’s warm in the attic, and the cooling charm wore off about an hour ago, so he’s down to a pair of old shorts and a worn, faded t-shirt. He thinks it was Ron’s, once upon a time, and before that, maybe Bill’s, or Charlie’s. There’s dirt under his fingernails that won’t scrub free, grease and oil worked into the lines of his palm, and his hair is still shining with water from the quick burst of a shower he’d indulged in minutes before.

He’s bored. The air is sticky and feels like hot soup against the bare skin of his arms. He’s got textbooks in front of him, open at random pages, covered in sticky yellow notes with his own familiar scrawl all over them.

He cracks his knuckles, hunkers down and breathes out a sigh that lifts the pages of the nearest textbook, skittering across the ink like dandelion seeds. He feels drugged by the heat; he can almost  _ see _ his breath immortalised in mid-air.

There’s the sound of a yawn from behind him, wide and unstoppable.

Harry grins, wheeling around in his chair. He wouldn’t be able to stop the grin even if he wanted to. Warmth unfurls inside him, and he feels the years peel back as he stares at a pair of round brown eyes.

“Hi, sweetheart,” Harry says, and he’ll never stop being shocked by the way his voice changes automatically, the warmth seeping into the tone.

A step, and then another, and Harry has an armful of a tiny, wriggling child as he’s crushed in a hug.

Al scrambles up Harry’s legs and throws his arms around his neck, another yawn taking him by surprise. It’s early still, and Al’s dressed in a pair of white pyjamas with little golden snitches fluttering all over the thin, soft fabric. His feet are bare, tiny toes digging into the meat of Harry’s thighs.

“Morning,” Harry says. “Good sleep?”

“’S too hot,” Al complains. Al is three, nearly four. His full name, Albus, makes him wrinkle his nose up in disgust, so Harry started calling him Al, and the name stuck. For a while, he insisted on being called Captain Kirk, after Harry scrounged up the DVD’s in a charity shop down the road. The other month, he refused to answer to anything other than Peter, and Harry still doesn’t know whether it was because of Peter Parker, or Peter Pan. 

Al’s a small boy, with dark skin and warm brown eyes, a smattering of freckles across his nose and cheeks. His hair sticks up all over the place in dark peaks, and he has a very serious expression, but when he grins, it’s shy and sweet and never fails to make Harry grin in return. .

“You want another cooling charm?” Harry asks. He swivels the chair around, carefully gripping Al slightly tighter while he digs around on the desk for his wand.

“Nope,” Al says, wriggling down off Harry’s lap. He strips before Harry can stop him, throwing his pyjamas all over the floor and running away with a giggle. Harry sighs in exasperation, watching a bare bum disappear into the kitchen, and then starts picking up clothes. He spends most of his time picking things up and tripping over toys and cleaning up spills. There’s no denying that his life certainly has got messier since he adopted Al four years ago, but it’s also gotten  _ better,  _ and he wouldn’t give it up for anything.

“We’ve got Nursery today,” Harry calls, banishing the pyjamas to the bathroom with a flick of his wrist. He hears a soft thump as they land in the bath, rather than the basket, and sighs. He frowns when there’s a suspicious silence from the kitchen, and makes his way hurriedly across the room.

Their home, the attic, as Harry calls it, is really a large converted space above a Church. There’s only one bedroom, which belongs to Al, so Harry’s double bed is pressed against the back wall of the living room. A television sits opposite it, balanced on a unit full of Disney films, next to Al’s toybox. There’s no sofa, but Harry doesn’t often have guests over, so he and Al usually just sprawl all over the bedcovers, or nestle into beanbags on the floor.

The kitchen is narrow but long, and Harry walks into it and finds Al dragging a chair over to the counter, still butt-naked, tongue poking out in concentration. He clears his throat, crossing his arms as he leans against the doorframe, and Al barely spares him a glance.

“M’not doing anything,” Al says, still dragging the chair along with him. It’s hard work when you’re that small, and Harry watches his slow progress with a half-grin, before he marches across the room and sweeps Al up, earning himself a shriek. He summons the soft blue dressing gown from the bedroom and wraps it around Al, not bothering to try and fit the flailing arms in the sleeves, and then deposits his squirming child on the counter-top.

“What are you after, trouble?”

“Cereal,” Al says. “With the chocolate bits.”

Harry winces. “You ate the last of that the other day, and I haven’t gone shopping yet. You’ll have to have these instead.”

He braces himself for a tantrum. Al narrows his eyes, cheeks puffed up slightly, and Harry decides to head it off before it can begin. 

He pulls down a box of Frosted Flakes, and Al chews thoughtfully on his lip, obviously thinking it over. Harry shakes the box a little, trying to tempt him, keeping one hand on Al’s leg to keep him on the counter.

“I guess,” Al says dubiously. “But put chocolate bits on them.”

Harry snorts. “I’m not putting chocolate chips on your cereal, but you can have some sugar on top, okay?”

God, when did he become an  _ adult _ ?

Probably around the time he died, he thinks morbidly, and then shakes the thought away as Al struggles into his dressing gown properly. Harry helps him tie the little ties, and then the usual bustle of breakfast begins. It’s easy, with just the two of them, but never quiet. The radio flicks on, playing one of the Wacky Warlock’s more child-appropriate songs, and the kettle makes an odd noise as it whistles to life. Al swings his chubby legs, his heels tapping lightly against the kitchen cupboards as he babbles, and Harry sets about making tea and cereal and toast right beside him, where he can keep an eye on how fidgety he is. His magic swirls around Al’s legs, ready to catch him if he should fall. 

“What’s that?”

“Marmalade,” Harry says, spreading some over his toast. “You want to try some?”

Al wrinkles his nose. “I don’t like mar-mould.”

“Mar-ma-lade,” Harry says slowly, sounding it out. “And you’ve never tried it, so how do you know? It’s like jam. You like jam.”

“Yeah, but I don’t like beans though.”

Harry casts him a sideways look. “There are no beans here.”

“When is Nursery?” Al says, switching gears fast enough to give Harry whiplash. He finishes his toast, drops another teaspoon of sugar into his mug, and then hoists Al down off the counter.

“In about an hour, so you have time to eat and get dressed and then we have to start walking, okay?”

The cereal goes down on the table, and Al begrudgingly climbs up onto the seat to eat it. Harry knows exactly how much of a slow process this is going to be – watching a child eat sends him back in time, to when he was taking his exams and watching the big clock on the wall tick slower and slower. Harry fetches Al some juice, and then settles down opposite him with his own breakfast, cramming himself into the tiny table they have in the corner.

He really needs to start looking for a new place, but it was the first one available when he decided to move, all those years ago, and it’s not  _ bad _ , exactly, just a bit small. Al likes it, at least, and it’s a good distance away from the nursery and the bus route into town, where Harry’s job is. He doesn’t really need the job – he has enough money to live comfortably for a good long while, but he enjoys having something to fill his days.

*

Three spills, two changes of clothes and a tantrum later, and Harry’s working in the machine shop. Harry likes the machine shop. He likes the feel of pieces coming together under his hands, the weight of the past sliding off him as his mind focuses. He likes the feel of fixing something, rather than fighting to destroy it.

It’s not something he ever thought he’d end up doing, but after the war, when he was still living in Grimmauld Place, in a house clogged with dusty memories and half-formed thoughts, he found Sirius’s old bike, and he started working on it. Just tinkering, just to give himself something to do, something to distract from the heavy layer of grief that seemed to squeeze him a little tighter every time he tried to take a breath.

He wasn’t very good at fixing up the bike at first, but he had never been particularly stupid, and he had always been determined. The knowledge came quickly once he started applying himself, and when he had finally given in, a year later, and moved to the South-West to get away from everything, he had taken the skills with him.

He’s got a rag thrown over his shoulder and his overalls half un-buckled when a red Audi slides smoothly into the garage. He glances at his boss, who jerks his head at the car and goes back to his book – some Stephen King novel that Harry has at home, sitting on one of his creaky shelves, unread – and Harry rolls his eyes and strolls over to tap on the window. The man inside jerks, rolls down the window and – and,  _ fuck _ .

“Potter,” Draco says, eyes wide, voice gone sharp with surprise. “What are you doing here?”

He hasn’t seen Draco Malfoy in years. Not since the war, not since he left the Great Hall that day. There was the testimony that Harry gave on his behalf, but he didn’t actually  _ see  _ much more than a quick glimpse of a pale face, sitting in the chair, resigned to his fate.

He can’t see much from here, but it’s pretty obvious that Draco’s changed, at least physically. It has Harry reeling, and from the look on Draco’s face, he’s not the only one shocked by the sudden appearance.

“I work here,” Harry says, gritting his teeth. He taps the car, pressing the pads of his fingers into the smooth, sun-warmed surface of the roof. “What’s wrong with this then?”

“Potter,” Draco repeats, sounding slightly dazed.

“The  _ car _ , Malfoy,” Harry says, tapping it again. It’s grounding, slightly, to have something other than Draco to focus on.

Draco narrows his eyes. “I have no idea.” He drums his fingers – long, pale, clean fingers, not like Harry’s permanently grease-ridden hands – against the leather steering wheel. “It just keeps making this strange noise and grinding to a halt, and the brakes are funny, so I thought I’d get it looked at while I was here.”

He motions for Draco to get out of the car. Draco bites his lip, and then slithers out easily enough and hands Harry the keys, straightening up, and shit, he  _ grew _ . Harry stares up at him – he’s a full four inches taller, at least. Last Harry saw him, he was skinny and gaunt, sat in the Great Hall with his parents, a shocked, shivering wreck.

Harry pushes the image away, replacing it with the lean, slender vision in front of him.

“I’ll have someone take a look at it in the next half hour or so,” Harry says, gesturing at the car. Draco blinks at him slowly. He’s got long eyelashes, just as silver as his hair, which looks soft and silky.

“What are you doing here, Potter?”

“I told you, I work here,” Harry says, hooking his thumbs in the belt loops of his overalls. “And anyway, it’s not really any of your business, is it?”

Draco’s face morphs into a sneer, but there’s none of the usual harshness to it, no cruelty, no malice. It’s like it’s all been wiped away, and now all he’s left with is an old habit.

“Now, now, Potter,” Draco says. “I was only asking a simple question. There’s no need to be rude.”

He still looks slightly shell-shocked, his eyes skimming over every inch of Harry, like he’s running on autopilot, like he’s trying to drink him in, absorb every inch of him. Harry just looks at him blankly, shrugs and scratches his nose, trying to ignore the slight rush of heat in his stomach from being  _ looked _ at like that.

Draco keeps staring at him curiously, so Harry raises an eyebrow and says bluntly, “What are you after, Malfoy?”

“How long exactly will I have to wait for you to look at my car?” 

Harry has a feeling that that’s not what Draco was really going to say.

“I’m going on break, so you’d have to ask the boss,” Harry says, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. He gets the top half of his overalls down and ties the ties around his waist, throwing the keys to his boss, who catches them one-handed, unimpressed, without looking up. Draco looks a little sour, but he also looks – well, he looks a little  _ flustered _ . Weird, because Harry doesn’t really remember Draco being the type to fluster before. Get embarrassed, yes, but not flustered.

“Do you often undress in front of near-strangers?” Draco asks. He sounds a little bitter, a little jealous, which doesn’t make  _ sense _ .

Near-strangers. The words send a dull pang through his chest that Harry doesn’t really understand. He pushes past it instead, anger surging up in its place. Harry glances down at himself, teeth gritted, but he’s pretty covered up, baggy jeans and white t-shirt hiding most of his skin from view.

“It’s not like my dick’s hanging out,” he mutters, and Draco utters a tiny sound in the back of his throat, averting his eyes completely as his eyes go even wider.

“Crude, Potter,” Draco says.

Harry rolls his eyes and strides out of the shop, throwing a wave over his shoulder as he snags his phone on the way out the door, leaving Draco behind.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t  _ stay _ behind.

“Potter, what the hell happened to you? What the hell are you doing down here, in this barren wasteland?” He casts a derisive look at his surroundings. Harry grins slightly at the description; Penzance is nothing like London, certainly, but it’s hardly a wasteland.

Draco barely has to move to keep up with Harry. He clamps down on the surge of irritation and carries on walking, taking a left turn at the end of the road. When Draco sticks to his heels, Harry comes to a stop in the middle of the street and wheels around to face him, sighing exasperatedly.

“Look, what do you want?”

The heat is stifling, and there are people all about, crossing the streets in shorts and tank tops, vests and skirts, flip-flops slapping against the ground. The noise of the crowd and the stickiness of the air only conspires to make Harry even more irritable.

Draco looks startled at the question, like he hadn’t expected it. His mouth opens and closes once, and then he narrows his eyes.

“You’re different,” Draco says. “I’ve heard Granger talking, in the Ministry meetings. She obviously knows where you are, but she would never tell. People have been asking where you are for years. Your name still crops up in the Prophet every few months. You disappeared.”

Harry arches his eyebrow, waiting. Draco grits his teeth.

“I suppose I want to know why.”

Harry rubs the bridge of his nose, stepping out of the way of a passing woman, who glares at him grumpily. She’s a frumpy old thing with thick-rimmed glasses, and Harry watches her leave rather than look at Draco, who’s watching him carefully.

“Once again, that’s not really any of your business, Malfoy.”

Harry swallows thickly, and then shoulders past him, storming down the street. He doesn’t want to deal with this, not now, not ever.

It’s not like there was ever a really deep reason why Harry left. It was a thousand little things that he couldn’t deal with, after the War and the funerals and the press conferences. A thousand memories that refused to leave him alone. 

“Potter,” Draco calls, stiff and angry, but Harry doesn’t listen. Draco doesn’t have the right to butt his nose in like this, to interfere, to mess with a good thing. They aren’t anything. They certainly aren’t friends.

Harry ducks down a side-alley and tears out onto another street. Penzance is a mish-mash of winding roads and little stores and houses, all lined up along the coast. The air is fresh with the scent of salt and fish, filled with the sound of waves crashing against the shore and the babble of tourists pointing and cooing. There’s plenty of places to hide, plenty of places to go, and Harry knows the area better than Draco does, after years of living here.

He shakes Draco by ducking into The Fudge Factory, dragging the scent of warm, gooey chocolate and sweet, tacky fudge into his lungs. He furtively watches a blonde head swan past the window, running his fingers across the bags of honeycomb chunks, waiting for Draco to disappear. He spends five whole minutes breathing deeply and standing in the shadow of the shelves, and in the end, he buys a pack of pecan brittle squares, just so that the cashier will stop staring suspiciously at him.

He pockets his goods and his change, stepping out into the bright sunlight and starting off down the street. He can phone ahead and tell his boss that he’s taking the rest of the day off, or he can go back and risk running into Draco again. Years ago, if anyone had told Harry that he would be the type to run from his problems, he probably would have squared off.

Now, he simply digs out his phone and dials the number for the machine shop.

*

It’s been a few days since Harry saw Draco, and he’s ashamed to say that he’s spent the time brooding, hiding inside the attic with Al. It’s strange, to say the least, because for the last few years, he didn’t really think he was angry anymore. Not bitter, not mad at the world, not hurting. He knew he wasn’t healed, not completely, but he thought that time and his friends and his son had softened all the sharp hurts.

And yet, seeing Draco had brought it all rushing back.

“You said we could go out and see the big water,” Al whines, reaching up to poke him. He’s already got his walking boots on, laces trailing on the floor.

“Those are on the wrong feet,” Harry says. “Good try, though.”

Al scowls down at his toes as though they’re to blame for his current predicament. He sits cross-legged on the floor and starts to pull them off, revealing one fuzzy yellow sock and another one that’s possibly Harry’s, because it’s far too big, practically falling off his foot. Harry summons a rolled-up pair from the drawer in the bedroom and kneels in front of Al, who sighs loudly but doesn’t make any further complaints.  

The socks slip on, and then the shoes, and the bunny goes under the bridge, and eventually they’re ready. Harry summons coats and scarves and bags and bundles them both up before leaning down to pick Al up.

Al leans back to grin toothily at him. Harry rearranges him on his hip, hand tucked under the dinosaur backpack firmly strapped over Al’s narrow shoulders. It squeezes his heart in a vice, to think that one day he won’t be able to pick this child up, that one day the backpack will be discarded, that the shoulders it used to sit on will be broad, strong.

He presses a kiss to one of those shoulders and lets Al say goodbye to the hamster in the cage, by the window, before walking steadily out the door and towards the footpath, the one that’ll lead them to the nearest cliffs. It’s Al’s favourite thing to do, to sit near the tops of the cliffs and scan the water below for basking sharks. They haven’t spotted any yet, but Al holds out hope.

*

Mud and grass sticks to his trainers as Harry makes his way up over the top of the cliff. They’ve been out here most of the day, nibbling at packed lunches and chatting about playgroup, about Al’s friend Scorpius who came into playgroup yesterday. Scorpius, who says he’s got big ears but a happy face, which is nice of him, apparently.

There’s never anyone around at this time of day, when the sun is low in the sky and the sea beats roughly against the edge of the shore. The dog-walkers trundling around are few and far between, and yet Harry feels less alone here than he ever did when he lived in London. With the crowded streets and the busy roads, it was easy to get up in the noise and clamour of people, easy to get lost. Misplaced. Things aren’t like that down here. It’s still busy in the towns, on the beaches; tourists flock to the seaside on holiday, bringing with them hoards of stuff that clogs the sand, but warm summer nights are empty of people and full of chirping crickets.

Harry picks his way over a dune at the crest of the cliff and sighs when he spots a campfire flickering in the mid-distance. Technically, there’s no real rule against it, but people generally aren’t supposed to have fires out in the open like this, not so exposed and untended. Harry usually wouldn’t bother with it, but for some reason he finds himself turning, trekking up along the path worn between the wobbly rows of coarse grass and weeds by aching feet.

“You know you’re not supposed to have open fires out around here,” Harry says, as he comes up on the group sat around the flames.

Three figures whip around at the sound of his voice, and Harry doesn’t bother suppressing a groan at the sight of Draco Malfoy’s surprised scowl.

“What are you doing up here?”

Harry arches an eyebrow. “Walking.”

He glances to the side, at the curvaceous girl sat beside Draco, her dark hair falling around her like a curtain. It takes him a moment before he recognises her as Pansy Parkinson, and both eyebrows go up as she looks at him. There’s a glass bottle hanging loosely from her fingertips, and she lifts it to her lips, winking as he continues to stare.

“Joining us, Potter?”

Harry shakes his head. “Sorry, can’t. I’m busy.”

The hand in his tightens, and Harry bends down on one knee to ruffle Al’s hair. All three sets of eyes drop to stare at Al, who shrinks back slightly under the intense stares, clinging to Harry’s jacket.

“Is that...?” Draco trails off, his voice soft.

Before Harry can make a comment about how great his deduction skills are, the third figure detaches itself from the group with an excited shout and starts toddling towards them at high speeds. Harry blinks down in surprise at the skinny little toddler racing towards them, and catches him by the shoulder before he can trip over a clump of grass.

“Al!”

“Scorpius,” Al says brightly. He tugs on Harry’s jacket. “Daddy, that’s Scorpius. He’s in Nursery.”

“That’s nice, sweetheart,” Harry says. He sticks a hand out to Scorpius, who looks delighted. “It’s nice to meet you, Scorpius.”

Behind him, Draco stands up. He strides down towards them, and Harry looks between them as Scorpius eagerly tries to fit his hand over Harry’s considerably larger one, and he can only really come to one conclusion.

“Never pictured you with a kid, Malfoy,” Harry says, but he makes sure to stand when he says it, so he doesn’t throw the words directly into Scorpius’s face. Scorpius doesn’t seem to care either way, focusing on Al, who is still shyly pressed up against Harry’s legs. Harry watches as Scorpius blathers on about the weather and the flower he found earlier, and the new toy in his backpack, and would Al like to see it, because it’s really cool and it’s not as fun playing on your own? Harry nearly declines again, but then Al tips his face up, hope shining in his eyes, and Harry groans again.

“I could say the same for you,” Draco says. His mouth quirks up a little triumphantly as Al slips past him, led by an enthusiastic Scorpius. “I suppose you’ll be joining us, after all?”

Harry really doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to linger in the awkwardness, doesn’t want to feel the familiar tension that comes with close proximity to Draco Malfoy. He wants to finish the walk, make his way back home, prop his feet up and zone out as some kind of God-awful kids show plays on the television. Al has already peed once in a bush, and he’s probably exhausted, but getting him away is going to be tricky. 

“You really aren’t supposed to have fires out here, you know,” Harry grumbles, as he plops down into the space beside Al.

“Relax,” Pansy says, waving away his worries. “Muggles won’t notice this, not with the enchantments we’ve put up. Just enjoy it, Potter.”

“Who’s that lady?” Al whispers, but his whisper is just as loud as a shout, and Pansy hears him easily. Her smile is sharp as ever, but it doesn’t look mean. There are tattoos meandering down her neck, and her top is so low-cut that Harry is a little afraid to look in her general vicinity.

“Pansy Parkinson, at your service,” Pansy says, inclining her head.

Al’s eyes widen. “Like the flower, Daddy.”

Al is a bit of a nature-lover. He keeps dandelions in a washed-out can of beans  on his window sill, and there’s a collection of shells in a neat little row on top of his chest of drawers. His bookcase is brimming with books on different plants and flowers and animals, most of which arrive in little brown paper parcels every month, courtesy of Neville. If Al is sick, they usually have to watch nature documentaries. Apparently, watching sharks swim around on the screen for hours has healing properties.

“Yeah, peanut, like the flower,” Harry says. He’s a little wary of Parkinson, for good reason. He knows very little about those he left behind that aren’t his friends and family. He knows that Gregory Goyle currently owns his own bakery, but that’s it. He knows that Blaise Zabini asks Ginny out once a month, usually in a slightly more grandiose fashion than the previous time, but that’s it. He knows that Theo Nott has the best, most obscure book recommendations, according to Hermione, and that he also likes treacle tart, which is a weird thing to know about someone you’ve never actually spoken to, but that’s it.

He knows nothing about Pansy Parkinson. The last memory he has of her isn’t exactly a fond one.

“ _ I _ found a flower,” Scorpius announces importantly, bringing Al’s attention back to him. He reaches for his backpack, which is shaped like a Niffler, and digs inside until he produces a crinkled, bedraggled daisy. He thrusts it out proudly, and Al snatches it right out of his hands. Scorpius gapes at him.

“Hey!” Harry says. “How many times, Al? We don’t snatch. Remember what we talked about? You have to ask for things you want, and if someone says no, you can’t just take it. You have to respect it, like you’d want them to respect you.”

Al wilts a little, staring at the ground. He never cries when he’s told off, and he doesn’t sulk, he just gets even quieter and smaller. It breaks Harry’s heart, but he refuses to raise a brat. He’s seen some of the kids in Al’s playgroup, and he sure as hell doesn’t want his son changing into that.

“Give the flower back, and apologise, please,” Harry says. He’s conscious of Draco watching him. Pansy seems disinterested, fiddling with the edge of the label wrapped around the bottle, eyes on the sea.

“Sorry,” Al mutters, handing the flower back. Harry knows he just got excited, just didn’t think before taking it. It’s not the first time it’s happened, though, not according to Al’s teachers.

“Hmm,” Scorpius says. He grabs Al by the hand and tugs him up, skirting carefully around the edge of the fire. “C’mon, they have more flowers over here. Pink ones, too.”

Al brightens slightly, sending a shy, questioning look over his shoulder at Harry, who nods even though he wants to grab Al and cling to him. He really, really doesn’t want to sit here with Draco and Pansy in stilted silence, with no kids to act as a buffer.

Luckily, Pansy comes to his rescue.

“So, Potter, any particular reason why you’re out here in the middle of nowhere?” Pansy’s gaze is knife-like, curious. “I’m just saying, you could be living it up. Cushy job in the Ministry, big mansion on the outskirts of London, that kind of thing.”

“Does that sound like me?”

Pansy shrugs loosely. “Wouldn’t know. Still think it’s ridiculous, though.”

“I like it here,” Harry says, firm and unyielding. “It’s away from everything. Plus, it’s a good place to raise a kid.”

Pansy snorts delicately. “You sound like Draco, here. He wouldn’t shut up about the schools and beaches and parks down here.”

“Funny, considering you called it a barren wasteland when I saw you last,” Harry says, raising an eyebrow at Draco, who scowls. He’s ripping up bits of grass with his fingers and twining them together in short, sharp bursts.

“Regretting it already, Draco, darling?” Pansy asks. She reaches for the pocket of her suede jacket and produces a packet of cigarettes, lighting one with the tip of her wand and inhaling deeply. Harry blinks at her, surprised; he never pictured Pansy as the smoking type, and yet it suits her, the way the smoke curls, vivid violet and dangerously slow.

“No,” Draco says, his mouth pulled into a taut line. “I do not regret it. We needed a change. It’s just going to take some getting used to. Things are very different down here.”

“That’s why I like it,” Harry says, voice quiet. He keeps his eyes on Al, who’s bent down, running his fingers all over the flowers and weeds. There’s going to be several more for the jam-jar by the time they’re ready to leave. He can feel the weight of Draco’s eyes on his face, but he doesn’t look.

“Well I hate it here,” Pansy offers. “Just for the record. In case anyone was interested.”

“Then why are you still here?” Draco asks irritably.

Pansy coos at him, pats his cheek, and then blows a smoke ring directly in his face. Draco splutters and waves his hands around to dispel it.

“Draco, you must work on putting more affection into your tone when you speak to your dearest friend,” Pansy says. “I’m here for my Godson. And I’m  _ staying _ , because you don’t even know where the bloody supermarket is, and you’ll probably die of starvation before you let go of your pride enough to ask a neighbour where it is.”

“Daddy knows where the supermarket is,” Al says, creeping up behind them and making them all jump. Harry’s kind of used to the way his kid moves on silent feet, but it still gives him a mini heart-attack when he’s not expecting it, and he was strangely engrossed in the conversation.

“Potter, were you aware that your child appears to be set on mute?” Draco mutters, and Harry snorts, before feeling immediately appalled at himself for finding Draco funny.

“You can come with us on Saturday if you want,” Al says, tipping forward on his toes, wide-eyed and eager. “We always buy doughnuts with the pink sprinkles.”

Pansy arches an eyebrow. “There you go, Draco, pink sprinkles. How can you say no to that?”

“Do I get a say in this?” Harry asks.

“Please, Daddy,” Al says, and Scorpius appears behind him, lightning-quick, and props his chin up on Al’s shoulder with equally wide, pleading eyes. Harry blinks, taken aback at the double attack.

“I-I guess.”

And that’s that. The two boys run back to their flowers, shouting and giggling. Draco produces a smart little card with his address printed on the front and thrusts it at Harry, who barely resists the urge to crumple it up and lob it back. He puts it inside Al’s backpack instead, makes polite conversation for five minutes, and then carefully detaches Al from his new-found best friend.

There are no tears, but it’s a close thing, and by the time the fire is little more than a flicker in the distance, Al is sound asleep with his head tucked under Harry’s chin, and Harry feels more tired than he has done in weeks.

*

The Harbour juts out of the main town, a great big slab of concrete lined with wet benches and rusted railings. The truth of it, however, remains hidden behind spells and enchantments. A single, solitary tourist hut stands at the side, and Harry taps his wand against the windowsill, almost knocking over a tower of pamphlets sitting on the side. A bony, long-nosed face pokes out of the window, takes in Harry with wide eyes, as it does every time Harry comes to visit, and then hurriedly beckons Harry along.

A gap appears in the enchanted barrier, and Harry urges Al through it, flicking a wave over his shoulder at the inquisitive wizard watching him from inside the hut, who immediately begins to flush.

Harry ducks under the invisible barrier and warmth rushes over him as the spells adapt to his presence. The drab Harbour becomes a sun-lit, bustling street on top of the shallow sea, stores lining the sides. It looks odd and crooked, with the buildings popping up out of nowhere, but Harry quite likes it. It reminds him of why he loves magic, the impossibility of it all. 

Storms of bubbles float down the middle of the street, brightly coloured and flecked with sparkling glitter, popping intermittently when poked at by curious fingers. Harry can feel Al thrumming with the urge to run and chase them, and his grip tightens on his hand. The street is packed, people crammed into every nook and cranny, gossiping and consulting lists and herding children around in a harassed manner, and Harry knows that no amount of magic would find Al again if he decided to make a break for it around here.

It's not the same as Diagon Alley, doesn’t give him the same thrill and warmth and sense of home as standing outside The Leaky Cauldron does. But Al always looks around in awe whenever they come here.

“You know the rules,” Harry says, squeezing Al’s hand. A tiny head of black hair tilts up to stare at Harry, and all he can see is the tip of a pink nose and a pair of bright brown eyes peeking out from between the top of a scarf and the tip of a warm woollen hat. It’s too warm for thick, winter clothes, but Al insisted. Harry finds himself biting back amusement; Al has never appreciated being laughed at, especially if he’s not in on the joke.

“No running off,” Al says gravely, his voice thick with disappointment. Harry spots a passing bubble and gently guides it towards Al; it’s charmed so that it will only pop when touched by a child, which makes for an amusing image, as dozens of adults go around batting the bubbles out of their faces, only for them to drift back towards them. Al’s face lights up, and he sneaks a furtive glance around him before squishing the bubble gently between his fingers. It resists for a moment, and then pops with a smacking sound that draws a giggle from him.

Harry watches him, pure warmth unfolding in his chest, and then leads them down the Harbour. Al skips every fourth step, hopping on one leg, which means they move slowly through the hordes of people. He’s usually quite a serious little boy, so Harry indulges the cheerful behaviour, even if it means they’re a little late for their appointment at Diffindo’s. Eventually they arrive at the little hairdressers, and Harry steps under the pinstriped awning, letting Al open the door, tiny fists curled against the smooth grain of wood.

A pair of scissors floats past as they enter the hairdressers, promptly followed by a bottle of hairspray. Chairs wheel around the room, ferrying customers from station to station. Harry leads Al towards the front desk, passing a man in a glittery waistcoat, who rifles through a glossy magazine, looking elegantly bored as bottles of nail varnish arrange themselves by colour at his station.

Al watches the proceedings with a small frown, taking in every inch of the little store. He reaches out and snags a small tub of hair gel from the procession line, examining it curiously before letting it float back into place.

Harry taps lightly on the brass bell at the desk, and a witch in long purple robes bustles over and gives them both a sharp, busy smile.

“Morning, loves. The Potters, isn’t it? Just a trim today? Alright, have a seat over here and we’ll pop your apron on before we get started, okay?”

Harry chivvies Al along, glancing briefly at his watch. He’s got to pick up a new order of work clothes from the post office before it closes, and there’s a ton of tidying up to do when they get home; he doesn’t really have time for the slow way that Al unbuttons his duffle coat and folds it up neatly before passing it to Harry, but there’s no denying that there’s something very endearing about it all.

“Why doesn’t Teddy haf’ to have his hair cut?” Al asks, scrunching his nose up as he’s bundled into a thin black apron. Teddy is quite a few years older than Al, and he always puffs up like a peacock when Al stares at him with adoring eyes, which is often. He’s just gone back up to Andromeda’s after coming to stay with them for a little while, and Harry knows that Al misses him.

“Because Teddy doesn’t need his hair cut,” Harry says, sweeping Al’s fringe back. “It grows slower, so it’s not long like yours is.”

“He’s got lazy hair,” Al informs the witch solemnly. She flicks a grin his way, lowering the chair for him so he can scramble up easily. “Why can’t mine be long?”

“Because it gets in your food when you’re eating, and it makes it hard to see when it’s always in your eyes like this.”

“Uncle Bill’s hair is long,” Al says, with the air of someone coming to a long-sought after conclusion. “And sometimes Uncle Charlie has long hair.”

“Uncle Bill and Uncle Charlie are old enough to know what they want to do with their hair.”

“So, I’m not big enough to have my hair the way I like it,” Al says, sadness creeping into his tone. His expression shifts to one of misery in the space of a second, a skill so far that only children have accomplished, in Harry’s opinion. It manages to make Harry feel incredibly guilty, even though he should be immune by now.

Harry hesitates. “You don’t like your hair being cut?”

Al shakes his head so that the soft locks thwap from side to side. “I like it like this. You can do plaits.”

Harry hesitates. He’s been trying – fruitlessly, for the most part – to teach Al about things like consent, and not doing things that you don’t want to do, and not doing things that others don’t want you to do. Things like respect, and boundaries, and bodies and morals. It’s never too early to learn, in his own opinion, and there have been a few incidents lately at Al’s playgroup. Incidents like hair pulling, and snatching toys, things that he wants to put a stop to.

“And we got it cut last week,” Al adds, putting both hands over his head like it might protect him from the witch and her scissors. The witch – Mary – looks thoroughly amused at the turn of events.

“Maybe just a trim? You have to be able to see, Al,” Harry pleads.

“My body, my rules,” Al says firmly. Harry isn’t sure if he actually knows what that phrase means, or if he’s just paraphrasing something that sounds important enough to get an adult’s attention. Harry curses the day that he asked Hermione for help when it comes to teaching his son respect.

Harry opens his mouth to reply with God knows what, when the bell above the door chimes, and two people walk in. Al’s expression brightens, and he gives a shy little wave to Scorpius, who bounces over excitedly.

“Al!”

Draco stands in the doorway, watching the two of them babble to each other. He looks good in Muggle clothes. They’re clearly tailored to fit him – sharp black trousers and a deep blue shirt, neatly pressed. A grey wool coat sits over his shoulders, and he rearranges the sleeves slightly as he turns those pale eyes on Harry.

“Potter,” Draco says, in a civil voice. “Don’t let us keep you.”

“It’s fine,” Harry says. “We were arguing anyway.”

“Mr Harry!” Scorpius cuts in, sounding remarkably scandalised for a four-year-old. “You can’t just cut people’s hair!”

Harry blinks down at Scorpius, who’s standing with both hands on his hips, positioned right in front of Al’s chair.

“Mr Potter, I do have other appointments today,” Mary says, a little apologetically.

“So, go do them,” Scorpius says. “You can’t cut his hair!”

“Scorpius,” Draco says, in a warning tone of voice. “Apologise. That was rude.”

Harry nudges Scorpius gently out of the way so Draco can get at him. He looks at Al, who takes his hands away from his hair and frowns up at him.

“We already made an appointment today, and we don’t want to waste this lady’s time, okay?” Harry says. “So, we’re going to get it cut today, just a trim, and then we’ll have a big talk about the next time, because if you don’t want it cut for a while then there have to be rules, like brushing it  _ every _ night and  _ every _ morning, and keeping it clean.”

Al ponders this for a moment before sighing heavily, like the weight of the world’s just been dropped on his shoulders. He wriggles around in the chair for a bit, and Harry nods to Mary, who starts up a soothing, cheerful bout of chatter as she goes about finding the parting in Al’s hair. Harry wants to tell her good luck, because Al may not have been his child biologically, but he has somehow inherited his messy hair nonetheless.

When Harry turns around, Scorpius is being herded into another chair nearby, and Draco is still standing there, watching him curiously.

“You’re different,” Draco says.

“Are you surprised?” Harry gestures at Al like he’s the answer to everything. He is. He’s not what saved Harry, no, that was the weeks and months of therapy that Ron and Hermione quietly walked him to every Tuesday. That was the steady, climbing realisation that he didn’t have to do anything anymore, didn’t have to fight, didn’t have to go to war anymore. No-one was chasing him, and he was free to live his life how he pleased.

The problem was, he didn’t know how to do that. The only thing he knew was that he wanted a family.

So, he waited, and he got better, and then he moved, and he found Al. And Al didn’t save him, but he sure as hell kept him going, taught him that things weren’t all bleak and painful.

“You must be different too,” Harry says. “I’m guessing that has something to do with the mini-Malfoy over there.”

And the strangest thing happens. Draco turns to look, turns to stare at his son, and his face just – softens. Glows a little, with pride and love and all the things Harry feels when he looks at Al. Draco’s mouth tips up a little, and he’s smiling, suddenly, this barely-there thing, and it’s  _ beautiful _ .

He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Draco smile before. Not like that.

When he turns back to Harry, some of that softness remains, but there’s a new determination in his eyes, something steely. He backs up onto the leather chairs near the door and folds one leg over the other. Harry finds himself following, squeezing himself into the seat next to him.

“Potter, I would like a chance,” Draco says haltingly, voice low. “That’s… that’s why we’re here, Scorpius and I. We came to rebuild, if you will. The Manor is too dark, now, for a boy to grow up in, and he deserves somewhere better.”

“What do you mean, you’d like a chance?” Harry says, watching Al point at his own face in the mirror and chat shyly to Mary. “I’m going to guess that you’re living down here now. I’m not going to stop you.”

“Merlin, Potter, do you have to be so bloody oblivious?” Draco shuts his eyes, takes a deep, sharp breath through his nose. “I am  _ asking _ for a chance to make it up to you.”

Harry’s heart stills for a second, and then resumes at triple the pace. He can feel the thud of it everywhere, thrumming through his whole body.

“To make everything up to you,” Draco continues. “My behaviour, the things I did in the war, I want to fix what I can. I don’t want my son to grow up hated for the things his father did. I’ve been trying for years now, to make peace with the people I wronged. To apologise for the things I’ve done.”

“Is this why Ron mentioned you the other day?” Harry demands. “He talked about you, and he didn’t swear.”

Draco looks quite smug. “Weasley and I have an accord.”

Harry just gapes at him, mouth hanging open unattractively.

Draco sniffs. “Do close your mouth, Potter, it’s unbecoming.”

Harry closes his mouth. And then he opens it again, and says, “What exactly do you have in mind?”

“We can start with grocery shopping, since our sons have already arranged it,” Draco says. Harry groans; he was hoping Draco might have forgotten about that.

“Well, we usually go on Saturdays,” Harry says grudgingly, “and Al usually tries to sneak every damn flavour of biscuit into the trolley, and there’s always a fight over who gets to steer, so if you think you can deal with that, then fine by me.”

“Scorpius hasn’t been grocery shopping before,” Draco muses.

Harry blinks at him. “Well, this should be entertaining.”

*

Draco’s car is no longer in the garage, so they pile in outside the modest, three-bedroom house that belongs to the Malfoy’s. It’s a nice place, Harry thinks, standing outside with his hands shoved in his pockets, staring at the neatly cut grass and the flutterby bush sitting in the flowerbed, grazing his eyes over the fresh coat of paint on the exterior, and the little white fence that leads to a gravel path. It’s simply and pretty, and not at all what Harry expected from Draco Malfoy. Not that there are any mansions in Penzance for him to commandeer, but he still expected something grander.

“I plan to expand,” Draco says, coming up beside him, keys dangling off the end of one finger. He swings them idly, gracefully, and Harry finds himself caught by the motion. “I wanted something a little larger, and a little less  _ involved _ with the neighbourhood, but there weren’t many available.”

Harry hides a grin.

He helps Al clamber into the spare booster seat, swearing when he catches his skin on the buckle before giving in and using magic to secure it. Al is too busy making his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle toy do the splits to care that his dad is bleeding out all over him.

Draco fastens Scorpius into the seat with practiced ease, smirking at him over the top of a wildly bobbing blonde head. Harry isn’t sure whether Scorpius is dancing or trying to escape his bonds, but it looks odd all the same. He scowls at Draco, resisting the urge to flip him off only because there are children present, and Harry is an  _ adult _ who can control himself.

“I still can’t believe you know how to drive,” Harry says, as he buckles himself into the passenger seat. The seats are butter-soft and comfortable, and he sinks into them, runs his hands along the seams of his jeans. He feels strangely restless. It’s odd; he hasn’t felt this kind of energy in a while, this strange sense that he should be doing something, filling up the silence.

“It’s a recent development,” Draco admits, fiddling with the keys. The car stutters, and then purrs to life.

Harry casts him a wary look. “That doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.”

Al giggles a little in the background. Harry catches sight of him in the mirror and smiles, slightly exasperated; the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle is currently sticking out of Al’s jacket pocket, upside down, legs pointing wildly all over the place. Scorpius slaps his chubby hands against his thighs as they pull out of the driveway and roll smoothly down the road, demanding music.

Draco begrudgingly flicks the radio on, and Muggle pop music fills the car. Harry groans loudly as the beat registers, and Draco shoots him a questioning glance.

“I’m going to have Taylor Swift stuck in my head for the rest of the week,” Harry explains, slumping down in his seat.

The ride to the supermarket goes quite smoothly, considering Harry was expecting several arguments and a stiff, stilted silence. Which is stupid, because with Scorpius in the car, silence isn’t possible. Silence is a little blip on the radar, a speck in the distance, a thin flash of green on the horizon, barely noticeable.

Harry’s not complaining. It’s sweet, seeing such an exuberant child, and even sweeter when he drags Al into the song, cheering and babbling to make up for all the words he doesn’t know.

*

“Really Potter? What on earth is a popping tart?”

Harry snorts, handing the box to Al, who twists around to drop it in the trolley, next to the bread.

“It’s called a pop-tart, Malfoy. It’s from America, and it’s like a sweet, breakfast food. Al likes them.”

“Does he also like diseases of the heart?” Draco mutters. Harry glowers at him, pretends to cover Al’s ears with his hands.

“One pop-tart isn’t going to kill him, Malfoy. And we eat our fruit and veg, don’t we?” He nods at Al, who nods back, despite the fact that it’s a lie, and then cranes his neck to look at Draco. Draco looks a little taken aback at the sudden attention, pausing in his tracks.

“We don’t eat mushrooms,” Al says. “Mushrooms are slugs. But we eat apples and coo-cumber, and even tomatoes.”

“Mushrooms aren’t slugs,” Harry chides gently. “Uncle George was just joking.”

Al gives Harry a very derisive stare, as though he’s being extremely stupid, and then turns back to Draco.

“Scorpius doesn’t like slugs, do you Scorpius?”

“Scorpius loves mushrooms,” Draco says. “Don’t you?”

He chucks Scorpius under the chin, and Scorpius glares at him, still sulking about having to sit in the trolley. It took Draco a good five minutes to unfold his rigid limbs enough to tuck him into the seat and buckle him in, and Harry quite enjoyed watching Draco grow more and more frazzled.

“No,” Scorpius says, his voice dripping with petulance. “They’re slugs.”

Draco turns his glare on Harry, who strolls past him into the next aisle, batting Al’s questing hands away from the bags of mini-marshmallows in the baking section. Draco pauses to look at caster sugar, and Harry is hit with insane image of him in an apron. Making something with Scorpius, maybe, standing at the stove in Muggle clothes and mixing icing while the cupcakes cool. Scorpius in a lopsided chef’s hat. Music in the background, and the scent of sweet dough in the air. 

Hastily, he busies himself with checking the eggs in the nearest carton. He’s not quite sure why his brain betrayed him like that, and honestly, he doesn’t want to press the image any further.

“Daddy,” Al says, tugging insistently on Harry’s sleeve. “We need those.”

He points at the shelves beside the eggs, in the freezer section, where rows and rows of yoghurts sit in their creamy white pots. Harry crinkles his brow.

“You actually want yoghurt?” It’s not often that his son actually goes for something healthy voluntarily. He will begrudgingly eat what Harry puts on his plate, most of the time, although not always. He’s taken to hiding peas inside the mashed potato and obscuring sprouts with a yorkshire pudding just to get them near Al’s mouth. One day he likes carrots and the next they’re the most hateful thing on the earth and he’s allergic to them and Harry’s trying to make him be sick. It’s an adventure, that’s for sure. 

Harry chews his lip and looks at Draco, who turns away from the sugar and arches an eyebrow.

“What is it, Potter?”

“Yoghurt’s healthy, right? Or is it one of those things that’s secretly full of sugar and might actually send my kid higher than a kite? Because I don’t think I can handle peeling him off the wall again, not after last time, with the skittles.”

Draco tips his head to the side, interested. “Did you really have to peel him off the wall? Only he’s a little young for accidental magic, isn’t he? Although I’m not surprised, considering he’s yours.”

Harry taps his fingers against the carton of eggs, and then shifts it into the trolley. “I don’t know if he’s got magic, actually. When I adopted him, there wasn’t any information about the mother. She could have been a witch. So could the father, for that matter.”

Draco looks shocked, but he quickly composes himself. “You adopted?”

“Yeah,” Harry says, lowering his voice and glancing at Al, who isn’t paying them any attention. He’s busy chatting shyly with Scorpius, who’s come out of his sulk for long enough to explain why dads can be such  _ melons _ sometimes, so Harry feels free to talk about it quietly. It’s not as if Al really gets it, the word, and they haven’t broached the subject yet. Harry would rather not address it in the middle of a supermarket aisle. 

“They make you jump through quite a lot of hoops, which is a good thing, I think. Makes sure the kids are as safe as they can be. And you have to get counselling and testing, to make sure you’re not using a kid as a coping mechanism, or a way to heal, that kind of thing.”

“I know,” Draco says, his voice even quieter than Harry. He glances at Scorpius, and Harry does a double-take. 

“You adopted? What about the famed Malfoy bloodline?” Harry asks. There’s a little bit of scorn in his voice that he can’t rub out. 

“I’ve come to realise that blood isn’t quite as important as some make it out to be,” Draco says loftily. Then he sobers, casting a wry look at Harry. “It only took a war to make me see it.”

Harry’s brittle smile fades away into something softer. There’s a beat of silence.

“Okay, I have to ask,” Harry says, wheeling the trolley a little closer.. “Did you pick a blonde baby on purpose?”

Draco splutters indignantly, turning wide eyes on Harry, who immediately cracks up, laughing so loudly that he barely hears Draco’s exasperated sigh.

“Undignified, Potter. As it happens, I didn’t,” Draco says dryly, watching Harry double over. “Luck of the draw, I suppose.”

Harry wheezes.

Al smacks him on the head, gripping his hair and tugging slightly. “What are you laughing for, Daddy? What is it? What’s funny?”

*

“I don’t really get what’s going on.”

Hermione gently pushes Ron’s face away before he can say anything, and then she leans forward to see Harry through the screen. Harry finds himself leaning back at the familiar intense look on her face, eyes on the trach-pad of his laptop, where a single crumb sits. He flicks it off and then pushes it around the desk with his thumb while Hermione hums thoughtfully.

“You know, Draco isn’t so bad. He apologised, for everything, which naturally wasn’t enough for most of us to forgive him, but he genuinely wanted to work things out. He made an effort. He showed up for my lectures at the Ministry and he mingled at charity functions and he made sure to actually talk to me, and include me and treat me like an equal, rather than like a Mudblood.” Ron makes a little disgruntled sound off-screen, and Hermione rolls her eyes. “He doesn’t use that word anymore. He’s not proud of his past, and he’s tried his best to make sure his future isn’t anything to be ashamed of.”

Harry wheels closer to the laptop, ducking down to rest his chin on his arms. “Maybe. But I haven’t seen any of that. He’s just shown up and started going shopping with me and stuff. Al and Scorpius are friends, now, and I can’t stop that.”

Hermione arches an eyebrow. Harry rolls his eyes back. It’s a thing they do, a language they’ve concocted over the years, all three of them moulding their own words out of subtle movements and twitches and ticks. Distance hasn’t stopped it, hasn’t even slowed it down.

“Okay, so I don’t  _ want _ to stop that. It’s good that he has friends.”

Ron rolls into view, peering at the screen. “I could say the same thing back at you, mate.”

“I have friends,” Harry says defensively. “I have you two, and Neville comes down sometimes, and loads of people write to me. There’s some of the guys at the garage, and even some of the mums I talk to at pick-up time. It’s not like I’m lonely.”

Ron and Hermione share a look, and Harry rolls his eyes. That’s another thing that hasn’t changed, the way they think he can’t see them when they do that. Hermione hastily looks away when she catches Harry’s eye-roll, but Ron just yawns and leans closer, ready to impart some wisdom. 

“I’m not saying you’re lonely,” Ron says. “But it’s different, talking to you through a screen-thingy, so it must be the same for you. You can’t tell me it wasn’t nice to have someone to shop with, or someone to moan to about Al when he’s doing your head in.”

Harry ponders this. He’s not wrong, of course, because people might think Ron is a bit dim, but that’s only because they’ve watched him eat, and he’s actually often right. There’s so much more to him than the occasional bout of bad manners, and he usually has the words to make Harry stop and think, or the actions to make him feel better.

“I guess so,” Harry says. “It wasn’t a bad day. Just weird. I don’t really get what I’m supposed to do, y’know?”

“Keep trying,” Hermione urges. “That’s the only thing you can do. And you may find you like the outcome.” 

“Now, enough about Malfoy,” Ron says, clapping his hands together. “Where’s my Godson?”

*

He hasn’t stepped foot in a forest since the night he died. When Draco nonchalantly suggests that they check out the local woods, take Scorpius and Al for a walk and feed the birds and squirrels, Harry balks. Not visibly. But all the same, something inside him withers and dies, some spark of warmth snuffed out at the thought of walking under a dark canopy of leaves, watching the shadowy tendrils creep out from behind clumps of bushes, listening to the dead-song of the sky.

He swallows, nods, and clenches his hands into fists. Draco gives him a searching look over a tub of cocoa powder, and Harry dredges up a smile. They set a date, during the slow stroll around the supermarket, and Harry fills his trolley with all sorts of idiotic things that he doesn’t actually need, but which Al will probably be ecstatic about.

He doesn’t really want to go, but Hermione encouraged him to try, and Ron seemed keen on it too. He trusts his best friends. 

He misses them. The only reason they didn’t follow him when he moved to Penzance was because of Ron’s new job at the Ministry, and Hermione’s upcoming promotion. Their families came into play, too, and Harry had actually thought it might be a bit healthy, for them to learn to be apart. There was no more war, he told them. It was all over, and they didn’t need to follow him anymore. It had taken a few nights of talking it over before they reluctantly agreed, and now here they are. Harry’s glad he did it, but it doesn’t stop him missing them. 

Trevaylor Woods is supposed to be thick with greenery, warm and welcoming. Of course, on the day of their playdate, the skies unzip and the rain soaks them within minutes.

It starts to lighten by the time they reach the bus stop, and then all that’s left is to wait for Draco and Scorpius. The wait is occupied with a game of I-Spy, a game that Harry has quickly grown to hate. He remembers car trips when he was younger, crammed in the back of Uncle Vernon’s car when it was unavoidable, when there was nowhere else to put him and they had no choice but to bring him along. Dudley had spent the time whining and attempting games of I-Spy, but he had always been a bit slow when it came to word and guessing games. Harry had never been allowed to join in.

He thinks of the birthday card tucked away in his dresser, from not too long ago. Big D is scrawled on the bottom of the cheap card. It’s funny, how things change.

Scorpius is one of those kids that you hear before you see, and Harry finds himself grinning fondly as a shriek and a splash interrupts his musings.

“Lovely weather,” Draco says, voice drier than toast, which is more than can be said for the rest of him. Water travels in thin lines down his overcoat, beading at points.

“Maybe for ducks,” Harry says, adjusting his hood. Scorpius is dressed in a bright yellow raincoat, with matching wellies, and he grins up at Harry before turning his attention to Al. He gasps, pointing at Al’s pink wellies, and then points at his own feet. 

“I’ve got shoes like that! We’re the same!”

Al grins shyly, hair falling all over his face as he ducks his chin down to stare at his wiggling toes. It’s not the first time a kid’s complimented his wellies, purely for the colour alone, but Harry suspects it means a little more coming from Scorpius. The two are thick as thieves.

Draco wrinkles his nose at the sight of the bus pulling up, stepping primly through the doors and handing over an exact amount of change. Harry fishes out a tenner and waits for the scowling, tobacco-drenched driver to fish out a bunch of coins. The coins join the general debris in his pocket, the crumpled receipts and small squares of loose, spilled chewing gum. He likes the kind that refreshes the breath, but Al likes Droobles, the kind you can blow bubbles with, the kind that are magically-guaranteed not to choke any small children.

Al and Scorpius scurry to the back of the bus, giggling, and clamber up onto the row of seats, clutching the back of the seats as they peer out of the grimy window, watching the cars line up behind them. The bus jerks into motion, and Draco stumbles slightly, almost going down on the gum-splattered, sticky floor. He makes a noise of disgust, straightening up and brushing off his robes. Harry belatedly realises that his hand is hovering beside Draco’s arm, ready to catch him. He shoves his hand into his pocket and sits gingerly on the back seat, next to Draco, who settles in.

“Don’t get comfortable,” Harry says, under his breath. “You have no idea what people do on these seats.”

Draco, who’s busy examining a suspicious stain near his thigh, looks up with an expression of mild horror. He slips his wand out of his sleeve and surreptitiously vanishes the stain. Harry snorts, because like  _ that’s  _ going to make a difference, but he lets it go.

The bus ride is peppered with giggles and little shrieks and hushed, conspiring whispers. It doesn’t take too long to reach their stop, and then it’s a short walk to the woods, which seems to tower up over Harry, the trees growing taller and more menacing with each passing second. He pauses on the edge of the car park that marks the entrance of the woods, and then takes a deep, steadying breath and follows the splashes of pink and yellow darting around in front of them.

Harry can breathe easy when they start to walk. He looks for the differences. The press of trees on either side is not heavy, or smothering. The silence isn’t deafening; birds chirp and flutter their wings, up high in the branches, and water writhes down the side of the path in shallow rivers. A family up ahead has a dog, a Labrador, which barks and pants every few minutes. There was no Labrador that night, Harry reminds himself firmly. 

“Something’s wrong,” Draco says, narrowing his eyes at Harry. The rain has slowed to a wet drizzle, misting over them, but the ground is still soggy with wet mulch and puddles of mud from the earlier downpour. They slog up the gentle incline, watching as Scorpius babbles at a carefully attentive Al, who stops every now and then to pick up acorns and pinecones, shaking the raindrops from his treasures and pocketing them carefully. Harry resigns himself to finding them in a few weeks, crammed into something, along with a handful of bugs and dirt and mud.

“You’re far too quiet,” Draco observes, when Harry doesn’t say anything. “If you didn’t want to come, you should have said something.”

“The last time I was in the woods with a Malfoy, it didn’t exactly go well for me,” Harry says, trying to joke. It falls flat as the colour drains from Draco’s face. He sighs, reaching up to rub one of his temples.

“Okay, so, not my best joke. I didn’t mean it like that,” Harry says. “It has nothing to do with you, and it had nothing to do with your mother. She’s the only reason I’m still alive. I just haven’t been to the woods in a while.”

Draco purses his lip, brushes his hands along the bark of a nearby tree. Five minutes pass in slow silence. Every leaf is saturated in moisture, water trickling down each tree trunk. Al slips up ahead and Scorpius squeals, reaching out to catch him. There’s no hesitation in the way he clings to Al, who scrunches up his nose and rights himself, kicking the offending twig out of the way. Scorpius chases after it, and Harry has to stifle a noise of amusement when he glances between the Labrador up ahead and Scorpius. There are definitely some… similarities.

Draco grits his teeth. “Do not say anything, Potter, or I will reduce you to ashes.”

Harry snorts, the earlier tension forgotten. The weight on his chest eases slightly as he watches Scorpius bring the stick back to Al. There’s a hushed conversation, and then they’re both scurrying off to the right, into the trees.

“Not too far,” Harry calls, and he hears Al shout something in return. He keeps a keen eye on the blurry splashes of colour and almost bumps into Draco for his trouble.

“Careful, Potter,” Draco mutters. His hand lingers for a moment on Harry’s shoulder, soft, hesitant pressure. Harry surprises himself by leaning into the touch, and then the hand is gone, and he feels slightly adrift. 

“You know, Pansy was going to join us, but then it started to rain, and she decided to stay in. Apparently, people of her level of beauty don’t belong in the harshness of nature, or something like that.” Draco sounds wry. “Note that I didn’t actually offer to take her with us, and that she invited herself along.”

A laugh escapes him before he can pull it back, and he wonders why he’s stopping himself in the first place. He’s entirely sure that Draco has no plans to hurt him – maybe he was uncertain in the beginning, but now that he knows Draco is trying to rebuild, trying to make up for things, he finds himself… trusting him. Not with everything. But with enough.

“In the hairdressers, you said you were trying to make up for things you’ve done,” Harry says, as they walk further into the woods. “Stuff from the war, and all that. Why?”

Draco rolls his eyes. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“Scorpius,” Harry guesses, watching him lean close and say something that prompts a giggle from Al. Nonsense words, probably, but no less special to them. 

“He’s part of it,” Draco says. “A big part. But actually, no.”

Harry scuffs his feet as he walks, kicking up bits of wet dirt and pine needles with the toe of his trainer. “So what, then?”

“I’m not making excuses,” Draco says, slowly, thoughtfully, after a long moment has passed. “The things I did, the things I believed, the person I was - all of it was wrong. But it came from somewhere. I grew up believing beyond anything that I was better than Muggles and Squibs and Muggleborns, or anyone with a non-magic parent. For a long time, I believed my father, and every word he spoke about the Dark Lord being our salvation, our way of keeping the bloodlines pure - it all seemed true.”

The woods seem to grow a little darker around them, the trees pressing closer. Harry quickens his steps to bring him closer to Al and Scorpius, the only bright spots in the world. 

“And what, you just stopped believing that?” Harry asks. “You’ve changed?”

Draco snorts. “Of course not, Potter. Nobody just stops believing something. Nobody changes overnight, but yes. I’ve changed. It’s taken me a long time, to change the way I think. I had help. From friends, from a therapist, a Squib, actually, who had one foot in each world. Sometimes, I still catch myself having old thoughts, about certain people and the world and myself, but I’m better now. I don’t believe what I used to believe.”

Harry stops, and turns to face Draco head on. Draco doesn’t seem to want to look at him, but he does anyway, tipping his chin up as he meets Harry’s gaze. And there it is, that Malfoy pride, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing, not when it’s not coupled with loathing and a sense of superiority. Pride is something they both have in spades, although Harry thinks it’s in different ways. 

“I’m starting to believe it,” Harry says. He shrugs. “I know you don’t give a shit whether or not I think you’ve changed, and I know my opinion isn’t worth anything to you, but I’m starting to believe it. You’re not -- you’re the same, in a lot of ways, but you’re also different. I don’t think I’d let you near my kid if I thought you hadn’t changed.”

“Your opinion is worth more to me than you think, you dense bastard,” Draco says, rolling his eyes. “But thank you, I suppose. Now come on, before they run off to join the fairies.”

They take a smaller, less-trodden path down near the river, veering away from the shouts of other people, but Al’s laughter is warm and his smile is big, and Harry feels safe regardless of where they walk. 

“Daddy,” Al says, when they reach them, and he holds up a fistful of bluebells for Harry to inspect. “Where’d you go?”

“I really don’t think you’re supposed to pick those, peanut,” Harry says. “Those are wild flowers. And we were back there, talking about boring stuff. Where did you go? Mr Malfoy thought you went off to find some fairies.”

“There are fairies down here?” Scorpius asks, crinkling his nose. He’s ankle-deep in a muddy puddle, dirt on his face and his hood pulled up over his hair, drawstrings pulled tight so that his mouth isn’t visible. “Like the ones Nanna likes?”

“Daddy knows lots about fairies,” Al says, cutting over Draco’s response. “He knows songs.”

“Poems, bud, but yeah, same thing.” Harry shifts uncomfortably in the face of Draco’s curious, slightly wicked grin. He snaps, “What?”

“Fairy poems, Potter?”

“Listen, people down here have all sorts of stories about stuff like that,” Harry says. “Folktales and fairy stories. Al liked stories every now and again, still does, but I’m not reading the stuff from the library, the children’s books. They do my head in.”

“How are fairy poems any better?” Draco asks, a touch of incredulity in his tone. 

“They’re short.”

Al yanks on Harry’s sleeve. “Say the wand one. Scorpius wants to hear it. Say it, please, now.”

Harry laughs. There was a please in there amongst the demands, at least. 

“Yes, do enlighten us, Potter.”

Harry glares at Draco, who looks far too happy about this turn of events, and then flattens his tone until it’s as dead and dry as possible. 

_ “In the woods the fairies meet, _ __  
_ In fairy rings which are so neat. _ __  
_ With wands aloft they practice spells _ _  
_ __ Midst lots of giggles, laughs and yells.”

Draco starts to snicker, but Al and Scorpius are doing some weird jig and babbling along with nonsense words, so Harry clears his throat and carries on. 

_ “They really have to get it right _ __  
_ And try and try with all their might _ __  
_ Not to make a daft mistake, _ _  
_ __ For every other creature’s sake.”

He has to strain a little to remember the words, but he’s spent quite a few nights leaned up against Al’s headboard, the little brown, recycled book sitting bent and battered in his hands. He barely has to glance anymore. 

_ “When “Wand Practice!” reached their ears _ __  
_ The other creatures disappeared, _ __  
_ They went to hide themselves away _ _  
_ __ To live to see another day.”

“Daddy, can I have your wand?” Scorpius interrupts suddenly, coming up to fumble at Draco’s pockets. Draco bats his hands away gently.

“Why don’t you find your own, instead?” Draco asks. He nods at the forest floor, where there are little piles of sticks and twigs, just the right length for a wand. “Look, there are wands everywhere.”

Scorpius scowls briefly, and then excitement seems to flood him at the thought of his own wand, and he stomps off with Al in tow. Harry watches them go, watches them bend to pick up random sticks, wet with rain, and throw them back down again, deeming them unworthy. 

“Go on then, Potter,” Draco says. “I believe you were in the middle of something.”

“That was for the kids. I’m not reciting fairy poetry to you in the middle of the woods,” Harry says, deadpan. 

“Well, you’ve already begun.” Draco shrugs, careless, like he doesn’t mind the answer. “You may as well get to the end.”

Harry grumbles to himself for a minute, scratching his nose to hide his nervousness. He doesn’t know why; it’s just a bloody poem, after all, but Draco’s watching him keenly, even as he pretends not to. 

_ “If in the woods you stray by chance _ __  
_ And all is quiet as if in a trance _ __  
_ A fairy giggle you may hear _ _  
_ __ Just audible to human ear.”

The breeze sweeps through, laughing at him. Harry ignores it. Draco watches the ground, watches the kids, watches him. Al finds a wand with a knobbly bit at the end and loudly proclaims it to be his, holding it up like a trophy. Scorpius gets distracted by a pretty leaf instead. Draco watches the trees, watches the sky, watches him. Harry watches him back. 

_ “If I were you straight home I’d go. _ __  
_ I wouldn’t want to linger so _ __  
_ In case you truly get to see _ _  
_ __ How dangerous a wand can be.”

*

They exchange numbers, after the trip to the woods. The sight of Draco Malfoy scowling down at a phone, fingers fumbling over the buttons, still unused to technology despite owning a  _ car _ , will stick in Harry’s mind for a long time. He calls every Saturday, at precisely nine o’clock in the morning, to ask if Harry’s ready to go to the supermarket. 

Harry finds himself at a bit of a loss. He hasn’t been in a rut, exactly, but the days have dragged a little. He’s found himself doing the same thing, every day, and although he never minds it, it’s nice to have something a little different to wake him up. He starts to do more things. He takes Al to the cinema, and to the park, and to the beach, and Al always insists that they invite Scorpius along, and then Draco tags along too. 

It’s on one such day when Harry gets up the nerve to ask about Pansy. 

“Are you with her?” he asks, as they traipse along the rocks. They’re a few miles East of Penzance, on Marazion beach. The weather is a little cooler this close to the sea, but Harry’s still dressed in shorts, the brisk wind lapping around his bare legs. Draco has shorts on too, but they’re longer, and even those seem to be tailored. 

Draco recoils. “ _ Pansy _ ? Merlin, no. I haven’t been with anyone in years, not properly. No, I’m not with Pansy. She’s dating Daphne Greengrass, do you remember her? She was in our year at school, although I suppose you wouldn't have exactly crossed paths.”

“Different social circles,” Harry says dryly, and Draco snorts at him. 

“That’s one way of putting it,” Draco concedes. “Scorpius! Put that down!”

A little ways down the beach, Scorpius holds a piece of crisp, dried-out seaweed up in the air, grinning like a fiend. Al is busy picking up shells, and he doesn’t see Scorpius creeping closer, but he hears Draco’s shout, and turns around just in time for Scorpius shove the seaweek down the back of his neck. 

There’s a lot of shrill shrieking and yelling. Harry winces as the shells go flying. He should probably do something, but nobody’s actually hurt, and Scorpius is laughing brightly, and Al’s murderous gaze makes a difference from his usual solemn one. 

“For Merlin’s sake,” Draco mutters. “Anyone would think he’s a Weasley.”

“I don’t think anyone would mistake him for a Weasley,” Harry says. He watches Scorpius dig the seaweed out from under Al’s t-shirt and fling it into a rockpool instead, before seizing one of Al’s shells and making a run for it.. “Maybe an honorary one.”

They walk in comfortable silence for a bit, following a weaving path their children have set across the sand until they reach the sea. Harry toes off his shoes and tucks his socks into his pockets, dipping his toes in the water. It’s  _ freezing _ , but he doesn’t let his face change until Draco also takes his shoes and socks off and steps in confidently. 

“Fucking  _ hell _ , Potter,” Draco says, leaping back like a scalded cat. Harry throws his head back and laughs loudly, brightly, his voice mingling with the sea-salt in the air. 

*

It’s a bad day. Al wakes Harry up at two in the morning by jumping on the bed, hitting him over the head with a stuffed hippogriff, and asking him to open a packet of crisps that he somehow scavenged from the kitchen. And then he has a small tantrum when Harry refuses to let him eat crisps at two in the morning, and then he doesn’t want to go back to sleep, so Harry is treated to roughly three hours of giggling and inane questions, because no matter how often Harry tries to put him back to bed, he just won’t stay there. He finds reason after reason to get up - first he’s thirsty, and then he’s not tired, and then he needs the toilet, and then he needs to sleep in Harry’s bed because he’s had a nightmare, despite not having been to sleep yet.

Eventually, Al conks right out, sprawled across Harry’s bed with one leg hanging over the edge and the other resting on the pillow, his mouth wide open, fast asleep. And Harry gets to enjoy one hour of peace, which is spent quietly tidying and getting things ready and doing the washing, before Al has to get up if they want to get to Nursery on time.

So it’s a bad day, basically, before it’s even started. And then his boss asks him to stay for a while, because Mikey got sick and they’re short-staffed, and Harry is faced with a bit of a conundrum, before it occurs to him to call Draco.

“Could you pick Al up when you get Scorpius from Nursery? Only I have to stay at work, and I can’t think of anyone else to ring.” He bites back his irritation when Draco shifts away from the phone to yawn. “Sorry, did I wake you?”

He doesn’t feel particularly apologetic, which is maybe uncharitable, but he’s running on coffee, which he doesn’t even like, and half a sandwich.

“Pansy kept me up all night, arguing with Daphne over the floo,” Draco explains. “I can pick up Al. Do you want to come by here after work or do you want me to drop him to you when you’ve finished?”

They hash out the details, and Harry hangs up a little abruptly when he hears a yell from the main garage. The day drags on, and he tries to stem the frustration flowing up inside him, but it’s hard. He hasn’t felt like this in a while, but bad days come along every now and again, and sometimes things just hit a wall.

He takes the bus to Draco’s, getting off at a stop just down the street and trudging along. He’s pretty sure Draco will give him a lift if he asks, but he’s feeling just mullish enough to  _ not  _ ask. But then he’ll have to deal with Al on the bus, and if he’s in a bad mood still, it’s not going to be much fun for anyone.

He knocks on the door, and Pansy opens it after a minute. She eyes him thoughtfully, and then selects her coat from the hook before beckoning him in.

“The brats are upstairs, Draco is in the kitchen, and I’m going out. You’ve got a look in your eye that I don’t like, Potter.”

The door slams shut before Harry can comment. He watches through the glass as Pansy saunters down the garden path and starts up the street, and then he shakes his head and moves through the hall. He can hear noise upstairs, and Al’s voice floats down, a curious lilt to his tone. Harry takes his coat off and puts it on the banister before heading towards where he thinks the kitchen might be.

He’s right, and he finds Draco standing at the cooker, stirring something in a big silver pot. It doesn’t smell… appetizing, exactly, and Harry winces as the scent grows more and more pungent the further in he goes.

“Malfoy,” Harry says, putting his keys down on the dining table with a clatter.

“Potter, try this for me. There’s something missing.” Draco turns around, proffering a ladle, and Harry leans away.

“No offence, but there’s not enough money in the world to get me to put that anywhere near my mouth,” Harry says. “What’s it supposed to be?”

“How is that not offensive?” Draco scowls at him, putting the ladle back in the pot. “And it’s supposed to be stew, with dumplings. Al helped with the dumplings. Bad day?”

That rubs Harry the wrong way, for some reason - maybe the domesticity of it all, the way it feels right but not quite right, and he grits his teeth.

“It was fine.”

Draco arches one pale eyebrow. “Well, don’t spill it all at once, Potter, I may get overwhelmed.”

Harry grunts, rubbing the bridge of his nose, where his headache has settled.

“You’re in a fine mood.”

Harry lifts his head to glare at him. “I’m not in a mood. It’s just been a long day, that’s all. Where’s Al?”

“Upstairs,” Draco says succinctly. “Sit down, Potter. I have coffee, and you can stay for food. I’ll order something, since I don’t want to offend your delicate taste-buds with my apparent monstrosity.”

“I can eat at home,” Harry argues. Draco levels a look at him, and Harry drops begrudgingly into a chair. “Fine.”

“What the hell is the matter with you?”

“I told you, it’s been a long day,” Harry says. “Al woke me up at arse o’clock, and I couldn’t get back to sleep.”

Draco continues to look at him. “There’s obviously something else wrong. You wouldn’t be being this much of a git if it was just because of an early morning.”

Harry leans back, glowering. Draco is waiting, somewhat impatiently, and eventually Harry closes his eyes and opens his mouth. The real reason spills out. “I couldn’t sleep. Not just because of Al, but because every time I closed my eyes, I could see green light, and faces, and I felt cold again.”

Draco stares at him solemnly. The only clue to his emotions is in the way his knuckles turn white against the back of the chair.

“Some days, I feel like I never made any progress at all,” Harry admits, tired to the bone. “Some days, everything grinds to a halt, and I feel like I’m fifteen again, grieving and hopeless and pissed at the world.”

“I understand,” Draco says, and it’s possibly the worst thing he could have said, because it stokes the fire in Harry’s stomach, and he explodes out of his chair, anger over every inch of his face.

“How could you possibly understand?” Harry demands.

Draco sets his jaw. “Maybe I don’t understand your experiences, but I had my own. You weren’t the only one who went through hell. I had him living in my house. I had his mark on my arm, like you have your scar. You didn’t know him like I did.”

It’s on the tip of his tongue to snap, to say,  _ I had a piece of his soul inside of me, and some days I could swear it’s still there. _ But he keeps quiet. He bites his tongue and watches Draco dig his nails into his palm, watches him try to find the words to explain what he means.

But there are none. Instead, Draco collapses into the chair and sighs. He looks rather miserable, and Harry feels guilt eat at his insides. He’s supposed to be better. He’s supposed to be passed all this.

“I’m not saying one of us had it worse than the other,” Harry says. “I don’t believe that shit for a second. There’s no hierarchy of suffering.”

Draco’s mouth twitches. “You sound like Granger.”

“Yeah, we should all listen to Hermione a little more than we do,” Harry agrees. He taps his fingers against the table, not sure what to say. His anger seems to have fizzled out quite quickly, leaving only a hint of frustration and a resigned tiredness.

“Why did you leave, Potter?” Draco asks quietly. “Why come here?” 

“I died,” Harry says, slow and with less emotion than he really feels. “I felt the spell hit me, and I went somewhere. I came back, but I was dead for more than a second. I died for my friends, and I don’t regret that. But I also died for the Wizarding World, and yet I saw it, afterwards, with the funerals and the press and the articles they printed. The underlying hatred, the contempt for Muggles and Muggle-borns and Squibs, this weird sickness that seemed to stick to the Wizarding World. None of that went away. Everything stayed the same. I died for a world that wasn’t going to change.”

Draco’s eyes pierce through him, deeply regretful.

“And I don’t mind, not much, not anymore,” Harry says, shrugging. “But I needed some distance from that. I needed a bit of space from the life where I was nothing but a soldier, something to stand in front of a wand. That was my whole  _ purpose _ . I’m fine with not having a purpose, after that. I’m fine with being a father, and working a job that just gets me through, and not quite knowing what the end is. I like my life how it is.”

“But sometimes it’s hard to remember that,” Draco murmurs. “Sometimes all you can feel is war and hatred. I’m not saying I understand to placate you, Potter. I truly do understand.”

“Yeah. I get that now.” Harry scrubs a hand over his face, dislodging his glasses. “I’m sorry I snapped at you, by the way.”

Draco watches him carefully, and then, with a gentleness that doesn’t seem befitting of him, he reaches over and straightens Harry’s glasses, pushing them up his nose, fingers grazing skin.

“I’ll let you off this time, Potter. But next time, I’ll make you eat my stew.”

*

“Put your hands on my body, swing that round for me,” Al sings, high-pitched and off-key. Harry bobs his head along a little and then makes a small noise of horror when the words register, whirling round on his chair to find Al entirely engrossed in his puzzle, words pouring out of his mouth absent-mindedly.

“Hey, peanut.” Harry clears his throat. “Where’d you learn that song?”

Al scrunches up his nose and tips his head to the side, pushing a puzzle piece around the smooth wooden floor.

“The man in the radio,” Al says. “And ‘m not a peanut, I’m an  _ Al _ .”

Harry suppresses a smile, still reeling slightly. “Course you are. You need help with that?”

Al surveys him thoughtfully, and then lifts the puzzle piece and bites down on it. Harry blinks, taken aback, and then Al takes the puzzle piece out of his mouth and puts it back on the floor, reaching for a different one.

“I got it.”

“You sure do,” Harry replies automatically. He decides not to question the inner workings of a small child’s mind. “Just don’t eat those, okay bud? You don’t want to choke.”

Al hums.

“I mean it,” Harry says sternly, but Al just keeps playing with the puzzle. Harry resolves to keep a close eye on him. He turns back to his book, slides a page over and settles in. He’s halfway through the next paragraph when he hears it again.

“Put your hands on my body, swing that round f’ me.”

Harry grits his teeth, whips out his phone, and dials Draco’s number. It takes a moment for the call to connect, and when it does, Draco speaks cautiously, his voice little more than a crackle.

“Draco Malfoy speaking.”

“Your son has corrupted mine with his taste in music,” Harry hisses. Then he pauses. “Is that really how you answer your phone?”

“I believe it’s called being cordial, Potter. You might try it sometime,” Draco says dryly.

Harry pulls the phone away from his ear and frowns at it. “You sound weird. What’s wrong with you?”

Draco’s discomfort is audible. “Nothing.”

Harry arches an eyebrow, even though Draco can’t see it. A bird lands on the telephone wire just outside the window, and Harry leans forward, propping his chin up on his hand as he watches the bird ruffle its feathers, digging a beak under his wing. He can wait.

A sigh. “If you must know, Scorpius was at a friends’ house last night, and Pansy forced me to… overindulge in Firewhiskey.”

The realisation dawns slowly. 

“You’re hungover,” Harry says, delighted.

“Malfoy’s do not  _ get _ hungover,” Draco snaps, but there’s no heat to it. Harry grins, taps his fingers against the desk and watches the bird take off, the wire rippling slightly in its wake.

Another sigh. “But I suppose, if we did get hungover, we might sound a little like this.”

“Like all the life’s been drained out of you,” Harry confirms. “Don’t you have any Hangover Potion?”

“No, but what I do have is a son that won’t stop  _ singing _ .”

Harry scowls at the reminder. He glances at Al, who’s still humming under his breath, trying to force a puzzle piece into the wrong place.

“I have Hangover Potion in the cupboard, and a bone to pick with you about why Al’s singing something sexual that I definitely wouldn’t put on my radio. If I remember correctly, you’re the one who likes to put on Muggle pop songs.”

Draco’s silence is both stunned and slightly guilty. Harry rolls his eyes, levers himself out of his chair and lopes towards the door to unlock it.

“Potter, are you inviting me over?”

Harry feels a little thrown off. He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out, and he stares at the door he just unlocked instead. It felt natural, to do it, to let Draco into his home, but he can’t deny that now that he’s thinking about it, the nerves are settling in.

“I guess I am,” he says lightly. “You know where it is, yeah?”

Draco snorts. “I’m not a complete imbecile, Potter. I can remember the route just fine.”

If it were anyone else, Harry would say he sounds nervous. The silence stretches for a moment, and then Harry chokes on a wry laugh.

“Can you remember how to hang up a phone?”

“Oh, piss off,” Draco says.

“The door’s unlocked,” Harry says cheerfully, and the line cuts off.

It doesn’t take more than twenty minutes before Harry hears the door open and shut from where he’s standing in the kitchen. He casts a quick spell, confirming that it’s Draco, which proves unnecessary a moment later when Al yells Scorpius’s name and flings himself out of his bedroom.

“Potter,” Draco says, appearing in the kitchen doorway with a haggard look on his face. “What the fuck is that infernal noise?”

Harry snorts, nudging the volume down on the stereo. “Disney music. Get used to it, Malfoy, Al won’t listen to anything else. He occasionally lets me put on Smashing Pumpkins or The Score, but that’s only if I beg.”

Draco scrubs a hand over his face and groans. It’s the most undone Harry’s ever seen him.

“Besides, I had to scrub out the song that  _ Scorpius _ got stuck in his head somehow.”

“So, you deduced that damaging his brain cells was the best way to go about it?”

Harry rolls his eyes and pulls two mugs out of the cupboard. “Speaking of damaged brain cells, there’s Hangover Potion in the cupboard above the sink. Next to the mouthwash.”

Draco doesn’t sag, exactly, but he does deflate in a dignified manner. Harry watches him go with a grin, flicks the kettle on. He can hear Scorpius from in here, offering his opinion on Al’s puzzle and blathering on about the dog he saw on the way here, a dog with a blue collar and big ears and fur that just looks like Grandma Narcissa’s fluffy coat. Harry fishes a few tea bags out of the tin and grins, listening to Al’s small, unassuming voice reply quietly.

“You have little yellow ducks on your bathmat,” Draco says, striding back around the corner. There’s a little more colour in his cheeks, and his eyes are brighter, not as red.

“Is that a crime?” Harry gestures at the fridge. “Pass us the milk.”

“A crime against interior design, maybe,” Draco mutters, pulling open the fridge door. 

“Our bathmat has green frogs on it,” Scorpius shouts, popping into the doorway with a bright grin. 

“Oh, does it?” Harry says, leaning forward. “Do you have a matching shower curtain, as well?”

“Nope,” Scorpius says. “I liked the one with fishes on it, so Daddy got it and then, when he was putting it up, he just fell over.”

“Yes, thank you, Scorpius, why don’t you go and play?” Draco says hurriedly. 

“He landed on the toilet and said lots of bad words,” Scorpius adds, and then skips off to find Al while Harry stands and grins at Draco. Draco stares, betrayed, at his son’s retreating form, and then turns to scowl warningly at Harry. 

Harry smirks. “Fell in the toilet, huh?”

“Wipe that look off your face, Potter,” Draco demands. “And I landed on it, not in it. Merlin, you’d think your own children would be on your side.”

Harry chuckles. “Al told the lady at the dentist that sometimes I take bubble baths at night and cry about things.”

Draco lets out a laugh, and then covers his mouth, like he’s not sure he’s allowed to. 

“There was also this mum at pick-up time, who said that her daughter told the teacher that the mum had a long pink stick in her bedroom drawer that shakes when you press a button.” Harry gives him a meaningful look, and Draco splutters, giving in and choking on laughter. 

“Merlin, you’ve got to keep everything in a locked box if you don’t want them to find it,” he says, and Harry nods. He can imagine that Scorpius is a bit of a nosy bugger. He watches as Draco grabs the milk, peering into the fridge, and bites his lip. It’s pretty easy to see where Scorpius must get it from. 

“Two sugars, please.”

Harry just barely stops himself from saying  _ I know _ as he accepts the milk. He remembers, from their days in Hogwarts, when he’d watch Draco spoon in two sugars and stir vigorously, at breakfast. He doesn’t really want to think about why that little nugget of information stuck with him all these years.

Truthfully, it’s not the only thing he knows about Draco that he probably shouldn’t. He knows that Draco hates ties, from the way he’d tug at them constantly, loosening their grip on his neck. He knows that Draco hates mash but loves roast potatoes. He knows that his face softens when he reads his mother’s letters, that he doesn’t have a sweet tooth, that he has a fondness for the Weird Sisters. All gleaned from careful, critical looks in the early hours of the morning.

Harry wonders what he’d learn if he knew he was  _ allowed _ to look. If he was welcome to stare. If Draco was open with everything that Harry wanted to discover.

Al and Scorpius skitter into view just as Harry hands Draco his mug. The print on the side says:  _ I cannot brain today. I has the dumb.  _ The sight of it in Draco’s hands has Harry choking back laughter, and Draco narrows his eyes suspiciously at him. He’s saved when Al and Scorpius start up some kind of game that involves a war-cry, startling Draco.

Harry watches Al clutch his little tummy as he laughs, pirate hat clamped firmly on his head.

“Do you ever get the urge to just squish them?” Harry asks idly. Draco pauses with his cup halfway to his mouth.

“Potter, you do say the most disturbing things sometimes, you know that? No, I can’t say that I ever feel particularly homicidal when it comes to my only child. Except for the time when he smeared yoghurt all over my Great-Great-Grandmother’s curtains.”

Harry snorts, stirring in a fourth sugar. When Draco shoots his mug a disgusted look, he adds a fifth and purposely clinks the spoon against the side of the mug just to see him wince.

“I didn’t mean it in a deadly kind of way. It’s like when you see a kitten, or a puppy. You kind of just want to squish it.” He shrugs. “It’s the same thing, really.”

“I believe it’s called cute aggression,” Draco says. He’s watching Harry like a hawk, and Harry can’t figure out why until he takes a sip of his tea and remembers the extra sugar sitting in the cup. He manages to keep his face blank out of pure spite, and Draco looks marginally disappointed at the lack of reaction, before turning back to observe the kids.

Harry looks over too, just in time to see Scorpius crush Al in an enthusiastic hug. His son freezes, eyes wide, and then shoves Scorpius away, hard enough that he goes flying, trips backwards over a toy dragon, and lands on the floor.

The world slows for a moment, and Draco tenses when Scorpius lets out a little whimper. The mugs go down on the counter, and Harry sidles out of the kitchen after him. There are soothing words, and Draco smooths a hand over Scorpius’s head, lifting him up until he’s back on his feet.

“Any bumps or bruises?” Harry asks, concerned when Scorpius’s lower lip wobbles. Scorpius shakes his head, and then turns his betrayed gaze on Al, who wraps his arms around himself. 

“He pushed me!”

“I didn’t want a hug!” Al fires back. Harry holds up his hands for silence, kneeling down until he’s at Al’s height.  

“You gotta use your words, peanut. If you don’t want a hug, you don’t have to have a hug, no matter who’s asking, but we have to remember our manners, okay?”

“He didn’t ask,” Al says stubbornly. Harry pauses, stumped, and Draco clears his throat.

“No, he didn’t. Scorpius, remember, we’ve talked about this. You can’t just hug people out of the blue. If they don’t want to be touched, you can’t touch them, okay?”

“But how do I know?” Scorpius demands sulkily.

“By asking,” Draco says.

“Like this,” Harry offers, and shifts to look at Draco. “Draco, can I hug you?”

“ _ What? _ No.” Draco looks so startled by the question that Harry bites his lip, a tiny snicker escaping him. Draco gets it a second later, and his cheeks start to grow pink, the colour deepening the longer Harry grins at him.

“So then what do you do?” Scorpius says, leaning forward eagerly. Even Al looks curious, the tension sliding off his shoulders as he watches them like he watches his documentaries, with an intense, sharp sort of focus that shouldn’t belong on a kid.

“I don’t hug him,” Harry says.

“Even though you want to?”

“Even though I want to. Even if it’s the most important thing to me in the world, I don’t hug him if he doesn’t want a hug.”

“That goes for all kinds of touching,” Draco says. “If your friend says yes, you can pat their shoulder or something, then you can do it, but if they say no, or look uncomfortable, then you can’t. Okay?”

“Show me again,” Scorpius says, clapping his hands.

Draco rolls his eyes fondly. “Potter, may I hug you?”

“Nope,” Harry says, popping the ‘p’.

“What about holding your hand?”

Harry pretends to think about it for a moment, and then he grins a little wickedly. “Sure.”

Draco’s eyes widen, and he grows still. He turns a rather impressive glower on Harry, but Scorpius nudges him before he can speak.

“Go on, Daddy. That means you can hold his hand now.”

Draco sighs sharply through his nose, and Harry wiggles his fingers at him.

“Unless you’ve changed your mind,” Harry says. “That’s fine too, boys, you can do that.”

“You can, but I didn’t say that,” Draco says stiffly.

Harry regrets his grin a moment later, when silk-soft fingers curl around Harry’s wrist, grazing across his palm and winding through his fingers. The light touch sends a slight thrill through him. His grin fades, and he tightens his grip a little, instinctively.

“See?” Draco says, raising an eyebrow at Scorpius. He clears his throat, and makes a shoo-ing motion, dropping Harry’s hand after another moment.

“Apologise to each other,” Harry says, nudging Al in the tummy, and there are reluctant apologies before it’s all forgotten, and they race back into Al’s bedroom. Harry stands, his knees cracking, and Draco follows him back to the kitchen. 

“How the hell do we teach them this stuff?” Harry asks, picking up his tea and settling against the counter. Draco takes one of the chairs and hums. 

“Scorpius and I have covered stranger danger, but he’s so excitable and uncaring that I honestly don’t know if he would even think before taking a stranger’s hand. It’s difficult, to drum it into them at this age, but this is when they need it the most.”

Harry sighs. He can hear the kids playing in the bedroom, argument forgotten, Al’s little squeal of a laugh rocketing around the room, and it makes him smile, but it also makes him deeply afraid. There’s so much responsibility in his hands, to teach and mould and nurture. He remembers the first time he felt fear like that, when he picked up his son, bundled up in cloth, and looked at those tiny, closed eyes for the first time. 

“Onto less heavier subjects,” Draco says, grinding his teeth slightly. “As intriguing as the prospect of a whole new world is, will you turn that  _ damn  _ music off properly, Potter, before I smash the stereo to bits?”

*

“Did you miss me?” Draco asks, one morning when they’re up on the cliffs, watching the water rage and roar, the morning that Pansy goes home. He’s said something snide, or maybe something awfully un-funny that Harry laughed at regardless - he can’t remember, he’s too busy watching the way the light hits Draco’s cheekbone, hollowing him out until he’s a paper-thin figure, poised on the edge of a precipice. 

He’s teasing. Teasing and amused, and he doesn’t mean it, didn’t expect a serious answer, or an answer at all, so Harry feels quite within his rights to shove Draco away, scoffing. Draco laughs, and it’s not the snide, mocking sound from their childhood, the laugh that used to make rage bubble in every delicate vein, as fierce and forceful as dragon-fire.

_ Did you miss me? _

_ Every damn day, _ Harry doesn’t say. He missed every part of Draco, all the time, always. He thought it would go away, but instead he’s stuck with it, this missing-him-thing, stuck with it deep in his bones, coating every inch of his skin, buried in the roots of his ribs. And he didn’t even know it was there until Draco wandered back into his life, and now he doesn’t think he’ll ever be unaware of it. 

Pansy makes a graceful exit from the Malfoy household at some point in the evening, and Harry is left with two moping blondes, although Draco pretends not to care too much. Scorpius cries, which means that Al cries too, out of sympathy or for attention, Harry doesn’t know.

“We should do something,” Harry says, as he watches his child lay face down on the carpet of Draco’s living room and scream. “To cheer everyone up. Trengwainton’s open tomorrow, I think, if you want to go there? We can take food and they can do the explorer’s trail, maybe plant some seeds?”

Draco shrugs from around Scorpius’s wailing form, and Harry rolls his eyes, bending down to pick up his son, who goes rigid and refuses to bend into any semblance of a normal human figure. 

“Trengwainton’s it is, then,” Harry says, and hauls Al over his shoulder. 

*

“Albus Rubeus, actually,” Harry says, as they make their way through the gardens. “I was going to go with Albus Severus, but Hagrid’s always been there for me, since the beginning. I’m not calling my kid Hagrid, though, so I used Rubeus.”

“I thought you would have gone with your parents names, in all honesty,” Draco says. The sun is warm and blinding, and the gravel path crunches beneath their shoes. Trengwainton is awash with colourful flowers - the lady at the front desk had informed them that the magnolias were in bloom - and Al is in his element, staring avidly at the pretty petals and touching the soft, velvety leaves. Scorpius has the Explorer’s Trail Finder’s Sheet crushed in one chubby fist, and a pencil in the other. 

“Maybe if I was with someone, and we were planning on having more kids,” Harry says. “But I wouldn’t have a Lily without a James, or the other way around, and I don’t have any plans to adopt again, not yet, you know? And there’s no guarantee that if I did adopt, that I’d adopt a baby, and not a toddler or a teenager or something. I don’t know.”

 

“No, it makes sense,” Draco says. 

Harry grins. “Not really, but thanks.”

“You could always get cats, you know,” Draco suggests, with a sly grin. “Get a couple of cats and name those after your parents.”

“I’m more of a dog person.”

Draco throws Harry a dirty look, and Harry knows why. He’s not supposed to say the word ‘dog’ within hearing distance of Scorpius, who’s been begging Draco for a puppy for weeks now. 

“You know, if you didn’t want to encourage him, then you shouldn’t have let me suggest a place where dogs are allowed to walk around,” Harry says, unrepentant. 

“Speaking of,” Draco says, and he trots off to detach Scorpius from a couple and their alarmed Dachshund. Al bumbles away from a patch of flowers to hold Harry’s hand, and Harry swings it, watching Draco distract Scorpius so the couple can make their escape. It’s been nice, so far, this day. They’ve eaten their fill of pork pies and crisps and apple slices, and they’ve looked at the sea from the top of the terrace. There’s a little second-hand bookstore in the gardener’s old home that Harry thinks Draco will like, and he thinks the kids will find something they like in the gift shop. 

It’s a good day, and he doesn’t want it to end, which is why it’s typical that the skies open, and the rain pours down. 

*

Harry finishes drying his hair, lobbing the towel in the basket next to the sink. He still feels damp from the downpour, but the warm, content feeling in his stomach hasn’t gone away. He hopes it’ll stay for a while. 

Al and Scorpius are settled on Harry’s bed when he exits the bathroom, both of them absorbed in a kids programme about a fireman, beakers of orange juice tucked in their laps. Al is wearing his golden snitch pyjamas, and Scorpius has borrowed a fleecey blue pair, complete with a pair of too-big socks. Harry grins at them both as he sidles into the kitchen, where he finds Draco cooking something for dinner. 

He’s wearing Harry’s jumper, the sleeves a little too short on him, and his feet are bare. Harry sits and watches him for a moment. He never thought, in a million years, that he would get to this moment. He thinks of all the taunts and sneers from Hogwarts, the more serious threats and injuries thrown at each other as they grew older. He can’t imagine what a younger Harry and Draco would say, if they saw them as they are, right now. 

Well actually, he can imagine what they would say, and none of it would be pleasant. 

The crack of the crust of fresh bread. That’s what draws Harry out of his past, out of his mindful wandering. He hears the slick slice of peppers being carved in half, then quartered, the juicy crunch of tomatoes being chopped up that follows. Bacon sizzles and spits in a pan of oil, grease drizzling from the spatula when Draco raises it to lower the heat. It’s odd, watching him cook in Harry’s kitchen. It’s odd, watching the sunlight slather him in gold. It’s odd, feeling like he’s always been here.

Perhaps he always has been. God knows Harry’s thought about him enough, idly, fiercely, sometimes with misery and sometimes not. He’s carried Draco around in the back of his head, in his pocket, in the weight that settles in his stomach when he thinks about towers and wands and bathrooms and scars. So, in a way, he really always has been there. Now he’s just a little more solid, something substantial, something Harry can reach out and touch.

He stands up slowly, listening to the way the chair creaks in relief. Two steps forward and he’s at Draco’s back. The sunlight drenches them both like the rain had previously, warming his skin, but Harry already feels like he’s on fire, and he hasn’t even reached out yet.  _ Yet _ .

His hand finds the spatula, wraps around the plastic just above Draco’s hand. Draco makes a small, questioning noise, turning and jolting at finding Harry there, so close. But not touching. Not yet.

“Potter,” Draco murmurs. “What are you playing at?”

“Not playing,” Harry says firmly. He feels anything but firm. He feels loose and light-headed, cut free, left to lift slowly upwards in increments, until there’s nothing left of him on this plain. He watches distantly as Draco swallows, watches the lump in his throat appear and disappear.

“Alright,” Draco says, and the word strikes Harry as funny, nudging him. It’s not a word that usually pours from Draco’s Malfoy’s mouth. It’s not sharp and crisp and snappy. A smile settles on his bottom lip. “If you’re not playing, what are you doing? If this isn’t a game, what is it?”

“Something I don’t want to lose,” Harry says.

He leans in, slowly, giving Draco plenty of time to move away, but before he can press their mouths together, a little voice pipes up from the doorway. 

“You have to  _ ask _ , Daddy,” Al says, reproachful. “And you have to get me more juice.”

Draco lets out a little crazed laugh as Harry drops his forehead onto Draco’s collarbone, groaning. A hand comes up to rest gently at the back of Harry’s neck, and he feels the touch all over. 

“Yes, Potter, honestly,” Draco says. “Have we taught you nothing? You have to ask.”

Harry grins against the soft wool of Draco’s jumper. He raises his head and looks up into Draco’s eyes, relishing in the blush that blooms across his cheeks. 

“Okay, Malfoy. May I kiss you?”

“You may.”

And then Draco kisses him, instead, and Harry can’t bring himself to care. He can’t quite kiss back because he’s grinning so badly, but then Draco tips his head to the side slightly, tugging Harry forward, and his mouth drops open in a groan. He thinks, somewhere in the haze of  _ more, more, more, _ that he could stay like this forever. 

“Daddy,  _ juice _ .”

**Author's Note:**

> I addressed the theme of consent mostly through the kids, by talking about choosing whether to have a hair cut or not, and asking when to touch or not touch. It's subtle, but it's there. Thank you very much for reading!


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